


How to Fly the TARDIS with Two Left Feet, a Piece of Interdimensional String, and a Toasting Fork

by themadlurker



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Background Het, F/F, Multi, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-14
Updated: 2010-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadlurker/pseuds/themadlurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't every day a pretty girl turns up with a broken spaceship, twelve hours to save her friends, and tells you you're the only person in the universe who can help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Fly the TARDIS with Two Left Feet, a Piece of Interdimensional String, and a Toasting Fork

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of Amy/River bonding, for [](http://fly-to-dawn.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**fly_to_dawn**](http://fly-to-dawn.dreamwidth.org/). Many thanks to [](http://sophinisba.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**sophinisba**](http://sophinisba.dreamwidth.org/) for looking this over at the last minute.

"Is that bit supposed to be blue?" asked Amy, staring at the manual for the second-hand vortic regulator they had picked up from a shady merchant on Cylos 3. She rather suspected the merchant hadn't been telling the whole truth about the equipment, but as they only had twelve hours to retrieve Rory and the Doctor from Z-space before their molecules decided to explore alternative career options, she hadn't been in the mood to quibble. Besides, River had said it looked all right, and that was after she had said something into the merchant's ear that made his eyes water and caused him to drop the price by three quarters.

"Oh, that's nothing to worry about," said River, or at least the bits of River that were still visible outside the underbelly of the console. Her voice was clear and steady over the sounds of tinkering that seemed to consist of 90% hammering things into positions where they didn't want to go. "Just a bit of corroded space dust, all perfectly normal."

"Corroded space dust, is that a technical term?" Amy wondered aloud. "And is it always blue, or does it come in a variety of colours based on where in the universe it comes from?"

"Absolutely," said River's muffled voice while something _twinged_ and _whirred_ its way back to life among the controls. "Blue space dust is perfectly safe, same goes for orange and pink. It's the green you have to worry about." She accepted Amy's hand to help her up and then leaned forward to whisper in her ear, "Between you and me, it can do funny things to people, green space dust."

"What does green space dust do?" Amy asked, feeling a little breathless without quite knowing why.

"Haven't the foggiest," said River, suddenly a foot away and turning a dial while Amy tried to breathe normally. "But the last time I ran into it was during a dig on Salaciex Prime and it made everyone on the team a lot friendlier." She tossed a wink over her shoulder at Amy. "Now, let's see if we can't get this working. Have you got a piece of string?"

Amy emptied out her pockets but produced nothing except a bit of lint. She had never picked up the habit of stowing odd items in her clothing, however potentially useful. "There was a box under the floor where the Doctor had some things for repairs and so on," she suggested and hopped down to the lower level beneath the console to fish around for it. There were several boxes of oddments down there, as it turned out, most of them labelled, "DO NOT TOUCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, NO SERIOUSLY, DON'T." There was also one bearing the legend, inexplicable, "FISHING" that, when Amy opened it up cautiously, turned out to contain a ball of yarn that looked nothing whatever like fishing line, no matter how you turned it in the light.

"Will this do?" she called up to River, brandishing the yarn up through a hole in the grating.

"That's perfect," said a voice behind Amy's elbow, that made her jump and almost bang her head against the floor overhead. "Interdimensional string always comes in handy."

"Interdimensional?" Amy asked, fiddling with the end of the yarn curiously. "It just looks like normal sort of knitting wool to me."

"Oh, it's definitely interdimensional," River said, rummaging around in the boxes Amy had avoided touching. "Anything that travels around between the dimensions is bound to get a little interdimensional if you keep it around long enough. It picks up all sorts of radiation and acquires useful properties."

"Are you sure you want to be doing that?" Amy asked, as River lifted the lid on one of the "NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES" boxes.

"People always put the good things in boxes marked, 'Do not open', that's how you know there's something interesting inside, whoops!" she exclaimed, jumping back about a foot as something went _bang_ inside the box and the whole thing began to rattle ominously. "Well, maybe a bit too interesting in this one."

She turned her attention to the next one and, while Amy stood at a safe distance, pried open the lid and tossed an assortment of metal objects out, one after another. None of them showed any signs of exploding, which was something, at least.

"What's the toasting fork for?" Amy asked curiously when River made a satisfied noise and stood up holding it. She handed over the ball of yarn - of interdimensional string - when River held out a hand for it and began wrapping the end around the tines.

"No idea," River answered, "but you can never go wrong with a toasting fork on a spaceship. Now, this looks like the throttle, wouldn't you say? Trust every spaceship designer to make the bit marked 'go' look like an antique joystick. And put in a big red button that makes the whole ship explode. It's some sort of universal constant." She stuck the toasting fork in underneath it and carefully unwound a length of string. "Now, let's see if we can make this thing go," she announced, toasting fork in one hand and rotary dial beneath the other.

"I'd call that promising, wouldn't you?" River said a minute or two later, once the world had flattened out again and Amy had peeled what she supposed was probably her body off the floor. It still felt more like a pancake than a body.

"I thought the Doctor taught you to fly the TARDIS?" Amy asked when she had got control of her lungs back.

"Did you?" said River innocently. "Yes, of course, he did. Oh, I wonder if I hang onto this one..." She fished the end of the fork out and jammed it under the dial she had been holding, unwinding yet more string to tie both into place while she flitted around to the other side of the console.

"Hang on a minute, you look like you have no idea what you're doing." She peered around the console at River, trying to get a proper look at her. She had been so focussed on finding River, when there wasn't one of those convenient messages of hers to follow, she hadn't even thought... but she _did_ look younger than Amy remembered, maybe younger than they'd ever seen her so far. "I don't think he's taught you to fly it yet at all," she said slowly. "Have you even met the Doctor?"

"'Course I have," said River with a wink, and then she was yanking on a lever with a brass knob and the words "tea cake" written on the end of it.1

Amy stared at her hard. "All right, what's he look like then?"

"The Doctor?" River was staring hard at the typewriter, her face right up against the keys. She could have been trying to work out some coordinates but...

"You don't know, do you!" Amy said triumphantly. " _You've_ never even met the Doctor, and you don't know what he looks like yet, and if you hit that key it'll go _bing_ and reset the coordinates to the year 5 billion."

River hastily withdrew her hand from the typewriter. Amy sidled up to her and entered the co-ordinates for Z-space — or at least, she hit the letter "Z" over and over again and hoped the TARDIS would get the idea. Then she turned to face River with arms crossed sternly.

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" she demanded.

"Oh, all right, so I haven't met this Doctor of yours—" River admitted. She didn't look the least embarrassed by the confession.

"Ha!" said Amy. "Then why did you come along when I said he was in trouble and I needed your help saving him?"

"Listen... what did you say your name was?" River asked.

"Amy!" exclaimed Amy. "You don't even know my name!"

"Of course I do," said River, "it's Amy. Listen, Amy, when a pretty girl runs up to you in a major galactic marketplace, throws her arms around you like you're her long lost love, says she's got a broken spaceship, twelve hours to save her friends, and you're the only person in the universe who can help you, it sort of goes to your head."

Amy gaped at her. "You'd never even met me, you didn't know my name until I told you just now, and you have no idea who the Doctor is and you _definitely_ don't know how to fly the TARDIS..."

"Glad you're catching up." River grinned. "Frankly, I thought you were a bit mad, but then I must be too since I'm here, aren't I? What do you say, shall we try to save the universe with a piece of string?"

"Right, just so long as we've got that cleared up," said Amy, eyes wide and incredulous, at herself or River, she didn't know. "Why not?" After all, they'd survived — they were going to survive — worse.

River reached for what looked suspiciously like a big red button and flashed a mischievous grin at her. "All set?"

"So that makes this your first TARDIS flight, yeah?" Amy asked. "Better find something to hold on to."

River gave her a broad smile and held out her hand to take. "Fly with me, Amy?"

"That's not quite what I meant," Amy said, but took it with a fluttering feeling in her stomach. She absolutely refused to smile back. "It's my husband out there we're supposed to be rescuing, you know. And my best friend in the whole universe. This had better work," she said as seriously as she could.

"Trust me," said River, "I'll _make_ it work." She leaned in as she spoke and Amy pulled back hastily.

"Did you hear the bit about my husband?" she asked. "I am a married woman, you know." Not that she had ever minded, so much, about who she kissed, but Rory got some funny ideas about what being married now meant. Amy rather thought it meant they should kiss each other, and other people too, if they were people like the Doctor, and River, who were just... important.

"Husbands don't bother me," said River, "but call it something for good luck, if you like." She pulled Amy back in by their joined hands and pressed a surprisingly chaste kiss against the corner of her mouth. "It's not every day I meet a strange girl who wants me to run off with her in a spaceship, you know."

"Yeah?" said Amy. "I have a feeling that's about to change."

"Oh, a lot of things are going to change around here," River promised, passed the string to Amy, and pulled.

The world went, briefly, sideways, and then they were floating out into Z-space, tethered by nothing but their joined hands on a piece of string.

* * *

1 The lever didn't actually produce tea cake, but the Doctor and Amy had spent an entire week without managing to work it out, until Rory noticed that every time they used it, half-eaten packs of tea cakes appeared in the TARDIS kitchen. Amy thought that was more likely because the Doctor had an odd compulsion to eat them while he worked and then got too distracted to finish the box, but Rory had looked so proud of his discovery that she didn't have the heart to tell him.


End file.
